Understanding vocabulary when reading is crucial for reading comprehension. The research is clear on this and it's important to include instruction on word meaning and vocabulary into our classrooms.

Who needs this strategy:

students that don't do well on a standardized word assessment

students that have difficulty determining meanings of unknown words within text

students that have difficulty finding clues in text for inferring meaning

The author cautions that we are not trying to determine student word knowledge but ratherwe want to know if they can use the text to infer the meaning of the unknown word.

"Multiple Meaning Words"

Who is it for: Levels J-Z+

What Genre/Text: any

Skills Used: monitoring for meaning, inferring

This strategy encourages students to think about whether a multiple meaning word is being used when something isn't making sense within the context when reading. Students are suggested to read before and after. Think about how it's used and choose a definition that makes sense.

Prompt students to

think about how the word is being used

think about what meanings you know for the word

is there another meaning that would make sense here in the text?

Using an anchor chart like the one below may help to model how to think/list the multiple meanings of a word.